The Game's Afoot PT 1
47:05 Share

This is exactly right. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Paul. How are you? I'm doing good. Another week has gone by. Can you believe it? I know. This is one of my favorite times of the week is when we tape. It's always such an uplift for me when sometimes I have to do a lot of writing on really bad things. It's always nice to talk to you. Even when we talk about terrible things, much of the time you have a smile on your face. People might not believe that, but it's true. It is true. You make me smile. How's that? Thank you. So what are you drinking? Every once in a while I want to ask that.

Well, I've got a coffee mug here and no, I'm not trying to hide bourbon. I'm actually drinking hot coffee and it is just not my thing. Yeah. You know, normally I'm doing the energy drinks, but I'm trying to clean up my kind of detoxify, if you will. And I thought, well, I'll go natural with the coffee. It's a struggle right now.

So your answer to detoxifying is going for coffee. Okay, that's a little bit better, I guess. I guess. I don't know if it is or not, but, you know, it's what I'm doing. So how long is this going to last a day before you go running back to Kava or something else? I don't know if this is going to last the episode. We'll see.

Well, I myself am also thrown off because I had a pair of glasses, progressive glasses, which I've never had before in my life. I had a pair and I was super excited and I put them on. And, you know, progressives work where you see, for mine at least, I don't know how everybody else is, but mine I see close up on the bottom and then I see distance on the top. And it's perfect, except there's this one spot where everything's blurry. And you, my friend, are at that spot. So now...

So now I'm really crabby because now you're blurry and I have to put on my old glasses and I was going to show off these new glasses and now I've been thwarted by my terrible eyesight. Yeah.

Well, you know, I have eyeglasses and they've always been progressives. And those, for the most part, have always worked well for me. Now I wear contacts and I've got this monovision setup. So one eye is set up to see distance and one eye is set up for close-up. But since I'm in front of the computer so much, I set...

that to be at the 30-inch, the typical computer monitor level. So when I'm doing anything closer than that, like looking at my phone, everything's blurry and I can't really do anything with the contacts outside of put glasses on with the contacts in order to look at something up close. And then it kind of defeats the purpose. It does. That's a tragedy.

It's just getting older. It's so frustrating. It is. So you're slightly crabby from the coffee, and I am irritable from the glasses. So this should be a hell of a fun episode. This will be interesting. Yeah, it's almost like the UFC, let's get ready to rumble type of intro. Oh, boy. And is this ever a case...

It's very open-ended and controversial and fascinating to me. So let's go ahead and jump right in.

So, we are in 1930s Boston. I lived in Boston. I went to Boston University undergrad. I loved Boston. And I was there primarily for the history. I've probably mentioned that to you before. Alexis jokes that every time I ask if you've been to a location where we are now exploring, you always say no. You've been to Boston, I have to assume. I have never been to Boston. No.

And it's not due to a lack of trying. That is the one part of the country I've never visited. I've never been to the Northeast. You know, and Boston, of course, is one of those, you know, historic cities that I'd love to go visit and, you know, see the historic centers there as well. I love Boston. Boston University is a great school, but I went to Boston because I love, you know, the time period, the 18th century. I love the buildings. I loved everything about the city.

and it was a wonderful experience being there. When we go back in time, we're talking about October 1st of 1936, and a lot of times I'll give you a long runway getting into these stories. Here are the main players, and it takes me a while to reveal who is dead and what the circumstances are, but we're going to jump right into this because it sounds like a nightmare for the

the police investigating it. So let's talk about what's discovered. There was a worker with the Works Progress Administration, which is the WPA, and he was taking his lunch break. And again, early October, he spots something bobbing in the nearby Boston Harbor. And that's never a good sign, I'm assuming. Not if it's a body. It is.

It is, in fact, a body. It's a bad sign. Okay. He didn't know what it was, but he could see that it was wrapped in what looked to him like a burlap potato sack and some green curtains. So he fishes this thing out of the water, this thing that's bobbing in the Boston Harbor, and he unwraps it.

And he is, of course, completely shocked to find that it is a severed human leg. He calls the police, the right decision, and the police locate a second leg that is also wrapped in a similar burlap sack and green curtains and floating in the harbor the same afternoon. So, you know, these two body parts have been sort of spread apart.

And these are two legs in two separate packages. We have done a story like this before, which was set in England and Scotland. So this is already going down a profiling road here. So you've got at least two body parts so far that have been separately wrapped up and distributed in the water. Yeah.

Yeah, do you have a sense or do you know, are these two separate legs, you know, you mentioned that they're floating. Do you have an idea about where in the river is this up by the shore where they're just kind of being held up by the bottom or are they literally floating? Because that's informative to me. My notes say floating. It looks like when we have the evidence photos, they show the shore. So let me share screen real quick on that.

It's surprising. Sometimes we have these stories where the drawings are very informative because they're from the 1800s, and then the pictures are not. I'm not sure how informative the pictures in this case are going to be. So this is where the dismembered body parts were discovered. Very rocky shore, right? And this is just in Boston. Okay. This appears that if these body parts were disposed of out in the waterway, then they've washed up

onshore or at least still in the water, but probably being supported by the bottom. Because I was kind of wondering, I've actually got a case with three bodies that were dismembered and body parts distributed across duffel bags and weighted down. The duffel bags had been stabbed with a knife to try to prevent gases from building up. And these things still floated just due to the decomposition and the gases that form and get trapped.

What I'm kind of curious about now is obviously we have a body disposal. Part of it is dismemberment, but also part of it is using the river. And do I have somebody that is going out in the river in a boat and then distributing the body parts across a very broad area? Or are they going to a bridge or are they just throwing these various body parts off on the shore? So that's what I'm trying to key in on right now.

Okay. This information is going to be less important once they identify who the victim is because we immediately will have some suspects. It does take a long time to find other body parts. And frankly, there are still body parts missing. You know, they never recover some of it. So this seems just off the cuff as a very effective way to cover up a murder, just the way that this person has chosen to do it. But I guess we're going to find out a little bit more then, right? Yeah.

Well, from a body disposal standpoint and covering up evidence on the body, it can be effective. You know, that water can be tough, but the type of packaging material can provide information. But the person had to dismember this body and package it somewhere. And this is a tough thing to do. It often is a very messy thing. And so if the body can be identified...

and the original crime scene is located, oftentimes valuable evidence is found. So they're thinking, oh, I need to cut the body up and prevent the body from being found. But if that goes awry, unless they're very fastidious and clean up-

oftentimes that's their undoing is at the location of the dismemberment. Well, we will have that information later on. So, of course, we've got two legs and the police are stymied and they can't figure out who this person is. This is what they can determine. And you can tell me what you guess from this.

They say that the victim was a female. She was brunette, somewhere between 25 and 40 years old, and she was short with a small build. Okay, the brunette part and the 25 to 40-year-old part. Is that really something you can do with just legs?

So they are making this type of determination just from the legs. Yep. So the 25 to 40, I've seen this done before where they were wrong. In fact, it was a 1969 case, Elaine Davis. And when she initially washed up on shore and was missing her head, lower arms and lower legs, she was

a radiologist determined that must be a woman 25 to 30 years old. And it turns out she was a 17-year-old girl. And so my suspicion is that they're relying upon, let's say, fusion of growth plates within the long bones of the legs, the brunette possibly, yeah, if there had been some leg color. And also right now, you haven't given me any information in terms of where the dismemberment actually occurred. Did this occur mid-thigh? Did this occur

occur up in the hip area? Is there a possibility that maybe there's some pubic hair that's part of these remains? You know, so it all depends on what is present, but it is extrapolating a lot, it sounds like. And just due to my experience, I would say that if they were right in that 25 to 40 year range, then it probably was just a lucky guess.

Okay, good to know. Now, one thing, because I know we're always looking for some sort of element that sets the person apart, a tattoo or something that would distinguish the victim from someone else. This woman had what's been described as incredibly dainty feet.

So foot sizes were much, much smaller, apparently, back in the 1930s. And this victim was a size three, which I can't even really imagine. Was that also for men during this era, that they had smaller feet than what men generally do now? You know, I don't know. I think of it as people earlier in the 1600s, 1700s,

And earlier were shorter. You know, you can tell from the houses that we've recovered. They were just smaller. The doorways are shorter. So I don't know if that's the same thing here. Well, that's interesting. But so size three, even back in the day, are they saying that this was a unique feature? Yes. And this is what the medical examiner said. He described her feet as beautiful. He said the feet are perfect.

I mean, come on. Does he have a foot fetish? I mean, I think that they were unusual and the police were trying to gain attention to have her identified potentially. It is a weird thing to put out, but I guess if the only thing you have available are two legs and two feet, you're looking for anything that would distinguish her from other people once the media gets a hold of this story. I mean, this is the 1930s, you know, because I was thinking...

Oftentimes, when somebody has been involved in hard labor, I mean, that has an influence on their body, whether it be on the outer surfaces of their body or as well as on the skeletal aspects of their body. And so anthropologists will say, hey, this person looks like they were involved in a type of labor that really stressed the lower legs or whatever else. Or I remember reading about some of the modifications to finger bones for women that were heavily involved with sewing labor.

you know, as seamstresses, you know, your occupation does have an influence. Yeah. And so for the pathologist to be saying, these are pretty feet, that must, again, be something that may have been unusual for what he normally saw. Well, one of the things also that investigators are saying is that she,

She had died likely between two and three weeks earlier. She was found October 1st. That meant that she was likely killed in mid-September. Could they really determine that? Two legs, could they figure out from two legs that this was a two to three week old murder? So when I hear that, you know, this body has been dead for, let's say, three weeks and make a presumption that these legs have been floating forever,

In this water with all the bacteria and who knows if marine organisms had access to the flesh. But just sitting in that water, the skin and the soft tissue is really, after three weeks, it's not pretty. Yeah. You know, and that's where now for the pathologist to be saying how pretty these feet look is

Now I start wondering, well, are these legs, were they well-preserved? And was she really floating? Were these legs really in the water for three weeks? Or maybe she had been killed and then dismembered after a period of time, then put in the water.

Yeah, I think those are all things that there's speculation about within the investigators. I think that now that the media has gotten a hold of this case, there's a ton of publicity. They are jumping, not surprisingly, into early profiling. Who is this person? And this is going to sound very familiar to you. They make some early determinations because both legs appeared to be cleanly cut and

And the police interpret that to mean that whoever dismembered this body had some sort of training, I know, as a surgeon or a butcher. The old surgeon or butcher argument, which you've debunked a lot. So let's just go through it again. This does not make any sense to you, right? No, it doesn't. I think to conclude that the dismemberment must have been done by somebody with medical training, there would have to be some—

such a unique aspect to how that dismemberment occurred that showed really deep anatomic knowledge. You know, as you mentioned, you know, of course, butchers are very well versed at dressing down animals. It's no different to dressing down a human body and dismembering a body. Mm-hmm.

Many hunters are very well versed at doing that. Somebody who works in the field, such as myself, I've never dismembered a body. I've dissected animals in biology classes, but I have anatomic knowledge. So if I were to dispose of a body, I probably could do it in a way that somebody would assume, oh, he must have gone to medical school. But also, you think about some of these killers, and I'm not saying this is the type of killer in this case,

But somebody like a Jeffrey Dahmer who, you know, part of the serial killer triad is, you know, the killing of animals. And, you know, Dahmer was somebody that was dismembering these animals that he killed. He learned how to dismember bodies doing that, right? So this is where oftentimes with these old cases and maybe even current cases where people

pathologists or investigators say, oh, this is looking like a really clean dismemberment, must be medically trained. I think that's very narrow-minded in terms of the real world and the types of people that are out there that do possess the skill sets or the aptitude to figure things out to make this dismemberment look as good as it does.

And we've talked about making these sorts of assumptions, especially when you're involving profiling, making assumptions can really lead you off track and can delay the investigation and point you in the wrong direction. And I mean, this would be coincidence simply if our suspect offender turns into someone who was a surgeon or a butcher or a hunter or anything like that.

And many investigators today, you know, when they hear this type of detail come out of, let's say, a profile, they generally will just table that information and not limit their investigation to, oh, I better start getting, you know, student rosters from the local medical school. You know, most good investigators realize, you know, this is just something that if I run across somebody, maybe I'll bring that detail up in my head and kind of assess this potential suspect against the information that

the profiler is providing. Well, I'll tell you, the description of this woman and her feet turned this story into chaos with all newspapers. They wanted the story. And in fact, in 1953, there was a newspaper article called The Model Murder Case.

And what was interesting about this is the description that I think is the perfect description for this story that explains why people were so fascinated, because it was framed like this. They called it a Cinderella search with a difference. The Boston police in the role of Prince Charming. Ugh.

The newspapers helped, however, and beautiful legs and tiny feet added glamour to the sordid story. I mean, I think newspapers now are gross. You should read some of the ones from the 1950s that I have to read, and that is a pretty good description of why people were so interested in this case. Yeah, you know, and I've seen some of these, you know, the coverage that newspapers would have on these homicide cases where they do almost...

glamorize the crime itself. And I think right off the top of my head, a perfect example is Black Dahlia. Yeah. You know, Elizabeth Smart and obviously a very attractive woman. And then it becomes more focused on that aspect than the atrocity of the crime and what was done to her. Right. One of the things that is appropriate, the appropriate use of the media is to

Getting the information out to the public in case somebody recognizes these characteristics and it's just a matter, is it done in an appropriate way?

So let's talk about who this person was. Not long after this story broke in the newspapers, there was a woman named Isabel Murphy. She lived in Alston, Massachusetts and began connecting the dots when she read about the dainty feet. The dainty feet is what glued her in because she had a friend whose name was Grace Asquith. And she was a woman who was a woman of color.

And she had not spoken to Grace for a few weeks. And Grace had beautiful, dainty feet. And in fact, she was a foot model at one point. And Isabel is alarmed because she's got this friend she hasn't spoken to. This friend has beautiful, dainty feet also. And she's trying to get a hold of the friend's

boyfriend, whose name was John Lyons. Isabel couldn't get in touch with Grace and she couldn't get in touch with John. And this was really unusual. And so she becomes very alarmed. And in early October, she contacts the police because she said this is too much of a coincidence. We rely on these people to help us, right? That's exactly what you said. The media puts the description out and you have someone who says, wait, I think I know this person. I

I would imagine that law enforcement probably had received multiple tips because this sounds like it's a fairly high profile case. So they're having to sort through a lot of information and then now Isabel's tip comes in.

Yeah, and it doesn't seem very strong. You know, your friend, you haven't talked to her in a couple of weeks. So what? Maybe she just went on a trip and didn't tell you. A lot of women in this time period had small feet. And how do you define beautiful feet? I don't know. So I think that Isabella first went to the bottom of the list for the police because you're right, they were digging through a lot of leads. So I will tell you that Grace is the victim. And I want to talk about Grace first, and then we'll talk about what happened. ♪

Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand. In June's journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling, hidden

object mystery game june's journey is a mobile game that follows june parker a new york socialite living in london play as june parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder there are twists turns and catchy tunes all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline this is your chance to test your detective skills

And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world

and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

So they said, based on her legs, 25 to 40. Grace was 41 years old. So this is the coincidence you were talking about. Yep. Dumb luck. And typically with, you know, anthropological assessments, it is a fairly broad age range. You know, unless they have aspects of the skeleton, such as the skull and the teeth, where they know, you know, within a few years...

one way or another that these certain features change during growth. Once the skeleton gets to a certain age, then that age range based on these skeletal characteristics usually is several decades wide. Yeah, and they were pretty close here. I meant to ask you back when we were really talking about the bobbing in the water, would the burlap sacks

and the green curtains help preserve the legs at all? Or at some point, are they so soaked that it doesn't matter, that it's going to deteriorate at the same rate anyway? Well, nothing about that packaging suggests that it's watertight. So I'm sure that these legs were exposed to the water. The packaging likely would prevent...

predation on the legs. Even though they're in the water, prior to being disposed of in the water, you still could get insect activity going on there. You have marine organisms that will start to form on the

or start to consume the remains. You also have birds. Most certainly this packaging sounds like it probably prevented a lot of that type of activity. But you still have the water exposure. You still have the bacteria in the water. That's going to be a problem. You have the bacteria from the flesh and the legs and all that. So decomposition is going to occur.

And it's probably going to occur at a fairly rapid rate. I would expect, though, that that cool temperature of the water is going to be the number one factor for preservation in this case.

Let me tell you a little bit more about Grace, our victim. 41, like I said, she lived in a lakeside cottage in Weymouth, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Boston, lovely suburb of Boston. That's about 15 miles south of the city. I mentioned before she was a foot model. Her father had managed a shoe factory and through his business connections because of the unique size and the beauty of her feet, she was able to get a job.

she began dabbling in foot modeling. At a young age, she married a man named Godfrey Asquith, and he owned a dairy farm in Newton, Massachusetts. He died in the 20s, and he left Grace everything, which was a lot of property and a trust fund that today would equal about a million dollars. So she was doing well in this time. She didn't have a job. She didn't have any children. She

She was just a socialite, you know, literally moving from friend to friend and building relationships. And Isabel mentioned that Grace had a boyfriend named John. Yes. Who is also missing, right? He is also missing. And, you know, John obviously benefits. He's at the cottage a lot. He benefits from Grace's money too. But she, as a person, people described her as

a joy to be around. She loved dancing. She seemed to have a good relationship with John. And she just seemed like she was loving life. So the police, when hearing this description from Isabel, when they were asking more information, they just did not seem to think that this was the person who would end up with two dismembered legs

in the Boston Harbor. She was not an at-risk victim. And that, I assume, tallies with what you would think just on the offset of, forget about the boyfriend being missing, just a description of her life. Right. Well, the phrase I always use, victimology is huge. Yeah. Grace is, at least on the surface, living a life that is not putting her at an elevated risk of becoming a victim of such a crime. Now, the one thing that you have mentioned that elevates her risk

is her financial status. Yeah. She has, I have a photo of a cottage, the cottage that I can show you. It's just the exterior of the cottage, but she does not seem to be living a particularly lavish lifestyle. But I think you would have to know that she has all of this money. I'll show you just the outside of the cottage.

There's the outside. I mean, I know that's not very much information to work with, but it looks like it has a partial paint job on the outside. I mean, this is not, she's not living in some mansion or anything. She seems to be living a quiet life, but still having fun and being social. She's 41. She's got a life to live. Yeah.

Even though it's a very limited area of the cottage, this just looks like very average construction. The law enforcement officer is standing on very routine wooden steps leading up to a door, you know, wood siding. It is not looking like it's a luxury home at all.

I would think that if this is the crime scene, the focus is not going to be on a robbery, at least not a robbery of someone who's just sort of casing the joint and thinking they're going to get a lot of money out of this. It's a very unassuming exterior to me. And I agree with that. So, Isabel Murphy is persistent. The police say...

I don't think this is our victim. But she says, you need to go at least, the least you could do is go check out the cottage that she has. So the police eventually make their way over to Grace's cottage. And when they step inside, it becomes very clear that Grace was the victim of extreme violence. So here's the scene, Paul. There's blood all over the house.

It's on the walls. It's on the mirrors. There are signs that blood has been dumped down various drains, the kitchen and the bathroom. And in the bathroom, they even found a bloody footprint, not a shoe print, but a footprint. So the footprint, if you're choosing between a footprint and a shoe print for evidence, what are you preferring? The footprint because it's potentially more accurate? Yeah.

It really depends on the quality of the print. With footprints, if this is a bare foot, well, you have ridge detail on the bottom of your feet. And that ridge detail has the same type of rarity in terms of the characteristics that are on your fingers, on your palms. So even though we don't have databases of...

footprint ridge patterns, you can still do a comparison, let's say, toe prints from the footprint at the scene to, let's say, suspect's toes, just like you can with fingers and say, yes, this person has the same, you know, class characteristics, same individualizing detail. And, you know, we've talked in terms about, well, how, you know, is this truly an identification? We're not going to go down that rabbit hole, but if you find somebody that has a

let's say a big toe, rich pattern on his big toe that's matching rich pattern in the victim's blood at the scene, that's damning evidence. That's very strong evidence in my mind. Well,

Well, let's see if it becomes helpful to police later on. So there's blood everywhere except in the kitchen. The kitchen scene is bizarre. There's a table and it's set up with three people. There's a bottle of whiskey and there's used glasses nearby. And there was a partially cooked corned beef sitting on the stove and the stove had been turned off.

There's also a butcher's saw and a cleaver in the kitchen, both of which appeared to have been cleaned. What is your impression of all of this? First of all, I'm not quite sure how they would know that the butcher's saw and the cleaver had been cleaned. How would you know that it had been dirtied to begin with?

Yeah, unless they were seeing these items, they have little nooks and crannies that blood can kind of stay in, but the large surfaces are readily cleaned.

So if they're observing, oh, it looks like there's blood in these nooks and crannies, there must have been a lot more blood on the other surfaces. So the offender took the time to clean these weapons. It's interesting to me that the offender took time to clean the weapons, yet is not attempting to clean up the house. Yeah. When I'm assessing a crime scene...

Anytime I see contradiction, that's when I step back. And I don't know why there's this contradiction, but I have to kind of really go, okay.

There's something going on with this offender that's a little bit off. Did he start a cleanup process with the weapons that he used to dismember Grace and then realized there's just no way I'm going to be able to clean up this house and just ran away? Did something scare him off? So don't know at this point, but it's something that I'm paying attention to because of this contradiction.

It's interesting that the kitchen is clean and it looks like there has been some sort of a get-together hosted at this table. So you've got some whiskey glasses, you've got a setting, it looks like they're going to sit down and have dinner and it's been interrupted, but there's blood everywhere else but in the kitchen. So what are the scenarios here?

There's an argument and it's taken into another room and that's where the primary killing is? Or what else would it be? I think there's a multitude of possibilities. Let's presume that Grace is the one that is cooking and she's in the kitchen. And you have the offender, whoever that is, the offender is in another area of the house and is basically lying in wait.

until Grace moves into that area of the house. Or the offender, if it is the guest for the dinner that night, goes further into the house and then calls Grace away, where he basically ambushes her in a different area of the house. And then the homicide occurs where we see all the blood.

and he's the only one that moves back into the kitchen in order to clean the weaponry. Most certainly the scenario that you brought up, do you have Grace and a visitor, a boyfriend, that are getting ready to sit down, and an argument occurs, and then that argument, when the, I'm not,

presuming the offender's a man, when Grace realizes that this is going a bad way, she runs out of the kitchen, he follows her, and then the violence occurs, and now he's got a dead Grace, and he has to dispose of her body and starts the dismemberment process.

I think these are just some of the possible scenarios. Part of assessing a crime scene, and you did a good job with this, is assessing normal living aspects in the scene. It's one thing to say, yeah, you know, whiskey's out. Is there a guest? But the fact that you have this, you said it was a roast, right? Corned beef sitting on the stove.

Okay. And I'm assuming this corned beef is fully cooked. It says partially cooked. Oh, partially cooked. You know, so again, there's a multitude of possibilities. One possibility is that, you know, dinner was being prepared. There was a guest over and...

the violence occurred before this meat had been fully cooked and then the offender, after killing Grace, took this out of the oven to prevent it from maybe, what kind of oven is it? It's a stove. What I would guess is this whole thing happens in heat

pauses long enough, number one, to try to clean the weapons and then number two, to turn off the stove so that nothing catches on fire. Sure. So there's, he's doing some stuff but then you're right, there's blood everywhere and at some point he must just say, boy, I can't do this. I've got to go. But also think about the possibility that he kills Grace and then starts cooking a meal for himself afterwards. Yeah.

I know you laugh, but it's a possibility. Really? Okay, okay. Dismembering the body isn't going to be a very fast thing. Maybe he's in this house for a period of time after Grace is dead, you know, and he's now just taking advantage of what's present inside the house before he goes out with her body parts. And he's hungry. So, yes, I could see that.

One of the things we should talk about is motive. You haven't asked me this yet. You always ask the same question. I always wait to hear you say it. Was anything, can you finish my sentence? Was anything? Well, you know, this is where, yes. Was anything taken? There you go. Was there anything disturbed in the house? Did the house look like it had been rifled through? Right. So I'm assuming you're going to provide some form of that information.

Yes, nothing. Nothing was taken. And this woman had inside the house, the outside looked very modest, but inside the house, she had jewelry, she had furs, she had all kinds of stuff, nothing taken. Not money, nothing. They were able to account for everything.

Okay. Did it look like the house had been broken into? Was the house locked when law enforcement arrived? We'll learn a little bit more about this later, but the house was airtight. She had just had locks, new locks put on the door, and I think like a bar to block the door. Somebody would have had to have been let in for this to have happened. It seems like no signs of a break-in or anything like that. Okay. We have another discovery, which is incredibly sad.

On October 23rd, so this is three weeks after the legs were first discovered, the

There's another discovery in Boston Harbor, and this is a woman's head. And poor Isabel Murphy has to identify it. So three weeks, and they're guessing that she had been killed in mid-September. So you're talking about more than a month of this head floating in another potato sack. Yeah. Could you really identify a head in a sack that's been in the water for more than a month? It would be tough.

Yeah. You know, there may be aspects. There could be her facial features, her hair, but this would not be a pretty sight. Well, absolutely. And one thing also, if I want to go back to contents in the house, the...

There were potato sacks in the house that matched the potato sack that Grace's legs and her head subsequently had been wrapped in. These were common, it seems like, and it seems like it was something that a handyman might use to load up firewood or really anything to bring in and out.

But they were able to say that the sacks inside the house that they found were consistent with the sacks used for disposing her body parts. It's clear this is who this is. But just for, I have a question about this little fact coming up, just for some added certainty, Grace's dentist said,

inspected the woman's teeth, the head's teeth, and confirmed that the dental work was consistent with his patients, would that be x-rays? It had to have been x-rays, right? And is that a certain science in court? Well, I mean, even to this day...

A person's dental characteristics, both just their teeth as well as whatever work has been done on their teeth, is something that is still charted and is used. However, with the advances in DNA technology, identification is typically done with DNA if we can't use fingerprints. But the dental aspects are still recorded. Yeah.

You know, again, it's something that the dentist or the odontologist can opine and say, yes, the skulls, teeth, as well as the dental work is entirely consistent with the medical records. And so I can't eliminate the possibility. And typically with other circumstances, it would be, this is a strong indicator that this is

the person. In the 1930s with x-rays, I'm not sure that there would have been a lot of x-rays of dental work that, you know, during life that they could have used to compare to x-rays of this skull. That must have been it though. I mean, I can't think of any other way where he would have been able to confirm an identity based on the teeth that were found with this head. Anyway, they say this is certain, this is Grace, and I think we're certain too, this is Grace.

Well, sure, you know, because what he's most likely looking at is he's looking at, you know, dental records saying, oh, she has a filling or she has fillings in these certain molars on the top, on the bottom. She had a crown here. Everything within the remains is consistent. If you have the more of those types of characteristics, the stronger the association. So we have a confirmed victim. We have Grace Askwith as our victim, 41-year-old.

And the police are now looking at her inner circle, and then they're going to move outward. And the inner circle, the most important person right now is John Lyons. So let me describe John Lyons before we talk about him a little bit. The police ask the friends, including Isabel, tell me about John Lyons. He doesn't have a criminal record. He has a pretty good reputation just as a person. Isabel says he was really nice. He was disabled in the war.

and this would be World War I. He was disabled in the war and got compensation, so he has his own money. Doesn't mean that he doesn't enjoy Grace's money, but he does have his own money. He doesn't seem to be a gold digger. They had been together for several years, and Grace never said anything negative about him, it seems like.

They had a really nice relationship. So forget the fact that for right now, police can't find him. This doesn't seem to have any red flags, except the red flag is this is the person who was closest to her and the most likely suspect, I'm assuming, just because this is her boyfriend. Well, John definitely has to be talked to, even though he doesn't have any red flags on record. You know, there are these...

you know, moments, you know, in the heat of the moment type crimes that can occur, you know, without any indicators that the person is capable of that violence. So this is something to where it's like, okay, so John Lyons, I need to go talk to John Lyons. When did he last see Grace and then start assessing him as a potential suspect?

John's landlady seems to be one of the last people to have seen him. And she said that he had been missing since September 19th, which is about 10 days before the body parts were found. If we believe the police and how they've dated when this murder happened, it was around this time period. So the landlady is very concerned because he hasn't even stopped by to pick up his pension check. So police...

are posting a $500 reward for information that leads to his location. They've sent radio notices out. They've distributed circulars. This is an all-points bulletin everywhere, including Europe, which have photos of John and copies of his fingerprints. They are on alert. He is in the wind. He is either a suspect, an offender, or a victim. Right.

And assessing the victim, this is where going back to the crime scene, I would be looking for evidence that I had two bodies that had been dismembered in that house or killed inside that house. Am I seeing evidence of that?

Now, you could also have a situation to where John was removed from the house by an offender and then killed elsewhere. But, you know, that's part of the assessment as to am I dealing with John as a suspect or as a victim? Or did John just happen to go on a walkabout and not realizing, you know, that something horrific has happened to Grace?

while he's been just, you know, doing whatever he does when he just decides to take up and maybe tour the country. Well, we'll find out a lot more in part two of this story, and we'll talk about it more next week. All right. I'm looking forward to it. ♪

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our art

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.